B (7:07)

Yeah, yeah. It might help if I give a bit of context maybe from that perspective. So the Irish National Lottery, set up in the mid-80s, it's a brand with huge emotional resonance within Ireland. You know, it's one of those kind of an inverted commas fabric brands here. You know, it's always brought a lot of joy through its marketing. I suppose the advertising is. The product is the kind of trope with the lottery. You know, they're not actually selling anything tangible. You know, they're selling a dream ultimately. So the advertising is essential for that. As within all markets that have a lottery, there's a master brand and then there are individual games that you can play. So the Irish National Lottery is no different. So those individual games will be things like the Lotto, Euro Millions, scratch cards, etc. So each of those games happen at a different time of the week. They need to be promoted. And I suppose what the Irish National Lottery has traditionally done is very much a brand focus at a master brand level. The Irish national lottery, about five years ago or so, in the early 2000s, they took an approach to have a more sales activation strategy to promote each individual game and both creatively and from a media strategy point of view, very much push the individual games to drive sales for those. So what that meant in practical terms was developing the likes of distinctive brand assets at a game level rather than on a master brand level, you know, and investing from a media perspective accordingly. So driving sales activation, I suppose more so and less so long term brand building.

A (8:51)

And why were they doing that? Was it because they had had new games come out or because they, they were noticing that there was a reduction in sales?

B (9:01)

Yeah, no, no, they were doing well at the time. And so Covid had just happened, which saw a peak in sales actually for National Lottery. So they, they have a mandate to promote these games, you know, they need, they do need to be promoted. How much of that promotion gets done at an individual game level in terms of the creative assets and the creative world being product led versus brand led, I suppose was the question.

A (9:30)

So Karl, from your point of view, when you look back at the body of work that's been in, that's been produced by the lottery, what are your thoughts on it prior to you guys? Because you guys just got it back, I believe within recent time.

C (9:45)

Yeah, that's right. We started working on the account, I suppose around last September, October. And if I look back at the body of work and if I go back 10 or 20 years, the National Lottery work in Ireland has always been among the best work that's out there and it's definitely the one that the industry talks about, but also the general public. And you'd have to go back a while and there would be big brand work that really got people talking, which from a creative point of view it was the brand that everybody wants to work on because you could do that type of exciting work as Enda referred to there in recent times, the work has been more sales activation game focused. And that's not to say that the work hasn't been good. However, when it has that focus, it's moved away from the big brand type work that it would have been famous for. And I actually, when we started working on Nikon, one of the first meetings we ever had at the National Lottery, one of the clients in the national lottery pointed out that they are one of the few brands, if not the only brand that can change people's lives overnight. Which I thought was an incredibly powerful statement. And for a brand to have that ability and what that means to individuals and families and couples and everyone, it felt like when you're focusing too much on specific games and then sales activations, you're missing out on that part of the brand which is really powerful From a master brand point of view. That felt like an amazing opportunity to reignite that master brand type work and to actually lean into that rather than the games which are still a valid role for but not solely game focused comms.

A (11:31)

Is that because each of those different products has a very distinct personality and set of assets that restrict what you can do?

C (11:39)

Yeah, well, that's it. They have and the way it's been worked, distinctive brand assets that apply to specific games. And they showed up as these games are regular, they're weekly, they happen at certain times of the year, they show up repeatedly as distinctive brands brand assets should do. But what wasn't prevalent and what wasn't showing up was a master brand and master brand comms. And essentially that was the direction of travel that we were going in when we pitched for the work.

A (12:10)

So was that enda. Was that an ask from the client that they, I mean, you know, lots of times a client will obviously you hope at least that when they come in that they're coming in with a stated problem into. Was it a review that you, you guys wanted in or was it just simply assigned to you guys?

B (12:27)

No, no, no, it was a competitive pitch. So.

A (12:29)

And then what was their ask?

B (12:32)

We started the pitch process about this time last year actually and it was probably about summertime then when we were awarded the account. And ultimately the ask in the pitch brief was they had made their decision, they were moving to a master brand strategy as Carl has mentioned there, you know, so the, the focus on individual product communications, as I say, they had year on year declining sales since 2021. So the brand equity had softened, you know, in that time, you know, a lack of investing in long term brand building that's going to happen over years and participation growth had plateaued and ultimately the economic headwinds that people are encountering here, you know, people started thinking more rationally about the brand, you know, weighing up should I play the lottery over, should I do something else? And if you're getting to that level with the lottery, you're losing. It's an emotional purchase. We're selling an emotion, we're selling a dream. So ultimately that lack of emotional connection and the erosion ultimately of the brand equity, that was crucial to stem and that was the pitch brief to us.

A (13:42)

But I look at, I can imagine if Paddy Power was on here, maybe I'm wrong, but my sense is, at least it is in the us betting has become goddamn enormous. And I can imagine that in the uk, Ireland and England that that is much the same, that betting has been growing significantly over the last number of years. Is it that the lottery just. When you say relatable, what do you mean by relatable? That people didn't think they could win, they thought it was ultimately a waste, that it was too, that the odds were against them. How do you think about that, Carl?

C (14:20)

I think it's not just betting. I mean for sure, same all over the world. And this isn't an issue for the Irish lottery. I'm sure it is for everyone. But if you're into football or horse racing, you can have a bet on your phone instantaneously, but it goes beyond that as well. Mobile games, there's thousands of them out there. People can win coins, win money, win points, and that's a dopamine hit. And that just widens the field of what you can do. But you can widen it even again if you consider TikTok and Instagram and people who post on that, you get a lot of likes. You get a dopamine hit from, from your likes coming in. There's that as well. And then if you consider how people consume media, if a streaming platform, you don't sit down once a week and watch a show, it's a rarity. At least if you do, you sit down, watch three, four. So this whole world of dopamine hits coming from different sources, instant gratification, immediacy, all going on. And that's a wider playing field for lottery games that's diluted with this. So if the lottery are too focused on game specific comms and too focused on sales activations, well, they're going to lack some relevancy because they're playing in a wider field and people are going to consider part of that. However, if there's a deeper brand meaning going on and if there's master brand meaning, well, then they move outside of that field and they have a meaning that is specific to them and unique to them. So solely concentrating on game specific stuff is a danger in 2025 because there's so much going on to compete with that in terms of winning. Instant gratification DOPAMINE hits. So it's essential then that a brand like the lottery stands for something unique that elevates from above that whole field.

B (16:15)

But we did do our own qual and quant as well, to really drill down into the Irish nuance. So we explored the emotional drivers, the cultural shifts, the category entry points, et cetera, all the things you'd usually do. Ultimately, a few key elements came to light early on, and we discussed these at length. And hopefully when we talk through the work, you'll see some of these coming through. So the first piece was that that really, really shone through was that everyday life pressures were. I suppose we're reshaping the perception of what life changing means today. So, you know, what is life changing for people is a little bit more grounded today. So we need to meet people where they're at. When we expose people to some advertising from lottery brands around the world that featured maybe more fanciful or fantastical ways that people were using the spoils of winning, you know, it just wasn't cutting through, it wasn't resonating with them emotionally, because ultimately that's not where they were at. You know, it wasn't really hitting a chord with where they are right now. The second piece we uncovered was that absolutely everyone had their own dream of what they do if they won the lottery. And obviously there was a huge scale in terms of what those dreams might be. One person's dream was different to the next. And for National Lottery, every adult in the country is their target audience. They don't have different segments. It is everyone. So dreams do range drastically.

A (17:44)

So what would be an example or two of what a dream might have been?

C (17:49)

I remember a lot of stock answers that you'd expect initially. So, yeah, I pay off the mortgage, but then once people are probed, you get something that's really personal to them and specific to them. But people needed to think about that a little more to deliver that answer, which kind of led us to believe as well that they're inside people, these dreams, and they're deeply held. But if you were to just ask them off the bat, they would give you an expected answer. If you're to have a conversation about what dreams mean to them and what it actually is, then you can actually get two dreams the same. They're very specific to people, they're unique to people. And that began to form rich territory for us as well, because that is a rich tapestry of dreams that exists across society that aren't the same. If you actually go underneath the hood, a Little bit more than the initial answers. That's when you start to get to the interesting stuff.

A (18:46)

Give me an example or two of the interesting stuff.

B (18:49)

I think that the ones that resonated the most for us as a team were the shared experiences. So there was that generosity of spirit. So we dug into that a lot more, you know, because ultimately we're looking for where the emotion is, you know, we're looking for where the universal levers are that we can pull. So we dug into that quite a bit more and what we found out was that actually when we probed people about the moment of the win, so not just what you do with the winnings, but the moment of the win, when we asked people what would happen when you shared that news or when you found out yourself, obviously they said, we'd be absolutely ecstatic when we said what would happen when you told the love to him or a friend, a close friend, that you'd won the lottery. And it really hit an emotional tone with people. People started imagining themselves telling their husband, their wife, their partner, et cetera, that they've won. And that was where the real gold came from in terms of that moment of the win. Because, again, if we think of, from an executional point of a creative point of view and then ultimately an executional point of view, where are we going to focus our efforts here? Is it on after the win and dramatizing the spoils of winning, or is it on the moment of the win and what might happen then and who you might be able to share that with?

A (20:06)

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, go ahead, Carl.

C (20:08)

Yeah, there's a shared excitement. People pointed out that, yeah, if you found out you won the lottery, that's not the exciting part. The exciting part is when you tell the person closest to you, and that was more exciting even than what you would do with the winning money. So people were, imagine if I get to tell my partner, imagine the moment when I tell my partner, rather than imagine the moment when I found out I've won.

A (20:36)

Hiya. Hi.

D (20:39)

Found this in the car. Fond, fond. If you could go anywhere, where would you go?

C (20:49)

France.

D (20:50)

France, Anywhere. And you'd go to France.

E (20:53)

I'd start in France in a camper van, drive down the French Riviera, eat my way along the leg of Italy, across the Greek islands, further into Asia, sailing into the Indian Ocean.

D (21:06)

Christy Columbus is.

E (21:09)

Was always a dream of mine. We had other dreams, but this wouldn't get us to our slayer.

D (21:19)

You'd be surprised.

B (21:23)

What?

A (21:26)

No.

B (21:28)

Really.

A (21:32)

The National Lottery, it could be but what's interesting too, about that, the spots, it's not about my dreams. It's about what I enable their dreams to be like. In each of those spots, the winners are actually letting somebody else know that they've won. And then the person who they're telling is the dream that gets to come true. Right? The husband and the wife is that it's not her selfishly saying what my dream is is. She is asking her husband what his dream is. And then she. In that beautiful twist, she says that it's possible she shares the reality of what just happened, which enables his dream to come true. The same with All Aboard. It's the band saying to Dara, your dream can also come true. Was that conscious?

C (22:26)

Yeah, it was. We looked, as part of our research, we looked at work from around the world, the. The best in the world. And we then tested that on Irish audiences and what they related best to. And we came up with three creative pillars. And this is at the pitch stage. Three creative pillars going into the pitch, the first of which was worthy winners. So you have to be rooting for the person. You gotta be rooting for them to win. You gotta feel like they deserve this. The second of which was grounded possibility, as in no matter how amazing the thing that they want is, it's got to feel like it can happen. So that meant there's no heightened realism here. It's real. And the third one then, is generosity of spirit, which is going back to what you're saying there. And it's not about you. It's about the people closest to you. It's about your loved ones. It might be about your community. It's about a shared experience. And we stuck to those pillars when writing scripts and when making work. So that's why it was never a solitary win. It was never about somebody just having their own dream come to life. It was about how that connected them to the people close to them or to people in their community.

A (23:44)

You feel this story is going in one direction, and then it just sort of twists in a beautiful twist that completely takes you by surprise in both of the spots. And I think throughout the work. I mean, it's really, really well crafted. Carl, tell us about how you got to that. Am I reading it right?

C (24:04)

Yes, that's correct. The starting point for the creative idea. And it goes back to relevancy, the notion of somebody winning millions of euros and the feeling that comes with that. Not many people can relate to that feeling because it is reserved to the few that have won the lottery or Those that have earned it. So you can make comms about these, like, extravagant, wealthy pursuits, but people won't know what it feels like, so it's not going to be that relevant. However, everyone has a dream, like literally everybody has a dream. And they're all different sizes, bigger and smaller, and the ones that we hold closest are the ones that we share with those closest to us. So our overarching idea of dreams waiting to happen leans into that. That everybody can relate to and leans into people sharing those dreams with those closest to them, rather than showing what that looks like or rather than showing this huge wealth, because that's. People can relate to the dreams. People can relate to sharing things with those closest to them. And we anchored it off that side of the lottery rather than the winning big side of the lottery, because what's in people's head is way more powerful than material gain.

A (25:23)

And what about the second spot? The other one's called Onboard. Little different, bit of a twist on this one. Where did this story come from?

B (25:31)

We were actually in production with that first spot when conversations started around a second hit in terms of a Christmas campaign. So in August, we started working on the Christmas brief. So a relatively quick turnaround given it was live in November. And I suppose the scale of the ad as well, as Carl mentioned earlier, we were very, very clear on what the inside is. We're very clear on what our platform is. Dreams waiting to happen is the platform here. We're very clear on the role for the brand. We're very clear on the generosity of spirit and that winning moment being where the emotional pull is going to come from. So when you put those pieces together, you know, the second spot is a Christmas ad. It's a different setup, different scenario. It's a syndicate rather than individuals playing the lottery. But in its essence.

A (26:28)

What do you mean by syndicate? What do you mean by syndicate? A group of people who.

B (26:33)

A group of people who can play the lottery together rather than someone doing it individually.

A (26:38)

So why that, by the way? Were you trying to promote that as a. As a way to play, or was that just needed for the story? It's.

B (26:45)

It's most relevant at the likes of Christmas time, you know, because Christmas we wanted to promote community, you know, a bit more. So community brings you to a group of people, and a group of people in lottery advertising is more aligned to a syndicate office.

A (27:04)

People in office buy tickets or people give tickets that are.

B (27:07)

Or that are from a group like this.

A (27:08)

Yeah, okay, got it. But this is about somebody living a life in rural Ireland. Damn. I remember those coaches, those little coach buses, man, when I was at the Gaeltach, you'd all jump in. And this idea of that Irish band of neighbors and friends that are going around and performing at different places, different homes, different church halls around their community, that's part of being in a community. So what we see in this spot, Carl, is Dara, who is the driver of the coach, and he goes around and he's collecting all the people who are part of this band that goes out and serves and entertains people in other communities, right?

C (27:51)

Yeah, that's right. I think the first thing to say, the best Christmas ads aren't necessarily about Christmas at all. At least the obvious signs of Christmas and the more about the spirit behind Christmas. And with this one, we want it to be a little more expansive than the initial brand one, which is very intimate because it was a Christmas ad and because it's a time of getting together and meeting people. So we wanted to feel a bit more energy to it deliberately. But as Ender says, nonetheless, it's about a dream waiting to happen. And that is Dara's dream. And yeah, initially the first round of this script, we didn't say who he was driving, because in rural Ireland there are these bus routes and they pick up people and they bring them to destinations. But then we said, no, we need to create a story around who these people are. And the brass band seemed like, unique. But also there's something a bit Christmassy about brass music, generally speaking, and that gave us our sprinkling of Christmas to put into it the story of Dara. He's an unsung hero, as in, he drives the bus, he possibly owns the bus, and he goes above and beyond for his passengers who are a brass band, and he waits for them if they're late, he puts the umbrella up and meets them at the door to bring them to the bus. But he thinks goes unnoticed. And the whole time he quietly is reading a book on Route 66, because that's his dream. He doesn't even believe that people have noticed that. And again, the emotional payoff at the end shows that that's not the case, that there's something bigger going on here.

A (29:36)

Love it. So here is all aboard. Dara, the coach driver's dream comes true.

D (29:44)

What a day. Hop into that chariot now. How are you? You feeling better today? Good.

B (29:50)

All aboard.

D (29:57)

I thought you were still in the shop. See you, dad.

A (30:08)

See you then.

D (30:12)

Route 66.

A (30:14)

Big skies, open roads, no potholes. It's always been a dream. Sure.

D (30:21)

You don't miss the rest of us here.

A (30:24)

Watch her step there now.

D (30:31)

Dara, come on.

A (30:37)

Oh no.

D (30:40)

You haven't. We have. We're in this band too.

A (30:49)

The National Lottery.

C (30:50)

It could be you this Christmas.

A (30:52)

All right, so Enda, we talked about the shift that this has taken for the clients. So let's talk a little bit about if there was some not nervousness but excitement and the need to do maybe some different ways of tracking brand as a result of this. What did the brand do? What did folk VML do in terms of tracking the impact it was having? And, and was the expectation that this is an impact that will happen over time or was there still this expectation that it would drive more immediate sales and transaction impact?

B (31:30)

Yeah, so we're working obviously as part of a wider group of agencies. So our partners in Red Sea do the tracking for National Lottery. So we work very closely with them from a strategic and tracking point of view. So this is more of a longer term play. You know, it's, it's a brand building exercise. So it goes without saying. There is a layer of conversion communications that goes alongside this. The, the big move, I suppose that.

A (31:57)

Are, that are product specific or game specific. Yeah.

B (32:03)

At a weekly level, you know, there is individual games and jackpots that need to be communicated to, are communicated about to people. So there is a quite a tactical job that does need to be done each week.

A (32:16)

And are they well branded as National Lottery products? Are they well understood to be National Lottery products?

B (32:23)

Yeah, no, they are, they are. And part of this exercise was creating consistency from a master brand level right down to the tactical weekly level.

A (32:32)

So.

B (32:32)

Yeah, exactly, right down to the branding on everything. You know, there's a green world that is being created. There was a big rationalization actually of distinctive brand assets because ultimately there was too many. You know, having multiple distinctive brand assets spread across multiple different games means they're not necessarily distinctive brand assets anymore. You know, they're. They're game assets. So having master brand assets and there's a handful of them and they're consistent across everything, that's the key. So that all media spend ultimately elevates the master brand.

A (33:08)

How did you do that? I'd love to understand that more because I was watching some spots that may have been older spots. One was for the Euro game and there's this woman who's winning $20,000 a month. Is that part of your or the main body of product work? Because it's hyper energy. It's about the possibilities, it's about indulgence and you try to bring generosity into that. How do you do that? How are you either graphically doing it or how are you bringing that master brand into the games? I suppose is the bottom line question.

B (33:41)

Yeah, no, the spot you mentioned is an older piece. So the latest, I suppose the conversion layer of communications that's going on that is very much. It's branded in a green world is what we call it the logo of the Master brand, which is the star, the kind of the Cosmo star and the it could be you tagline are fundamental to the tactical communication. So the tactical communications now and the game comms are very hard working. But there are the key assets that appear in the Master brand. So everything is linked far more succinctly now.

A (34:18)

And then my last follow up on that would be. So, Carl, do you. Do you now have to think about the ambient effect in the storytelling at the product level from the Master brand, or do those product brands, let's call them, do they remain wholly independent conceptually? And they're just sort of. They're sort of bracketed in. With some graphic reinforcement, we have established.

C (34:46)

A set of Master Brand rules that also seep into that level of work as well. And that is to do with who we feature, how we show up at the point of what we talk about, as Enda mentioned, the colors, for sure, we will be establishing brand music too. So it's a tonal thing and it's about when and where we show up relative to how people win. And we are very much, for example, at the point of finding out when you find out that you've won rather than the result of winning. So that all has to apply and there has to be a structure in place that goes from the Master brandcom the whole way through to the conversion funnel with a set of rules that applies to each point. So that's what we've set up and that's how that will work in collaboration, in close collaboration with our partner agencies and so that we are all working from the same sheet of brand rules so that there is that tight correlation between all the work.

A (35:58)

So Enda just. I mean, it's been a hell of a journey. The work is fantastic and I think it's a great example of work. And I see it in many countries around the world where great ideas don't come to life as well as they could because they don't get the right director and cinematographer. Their production values cause the dilution of ideas. And I encourage marketers throughout Ireland to do more of this because I think this is a brilliant example of great ambition, incredibly well crafted and incredibly well shot. And it's worth the extra investment in my point of view, because it creates iconic, brand, iconic work. It's Anda Kelly, managing director, Folk VML in Dublin, Ireland, and the great Carl Waters, Chief Creative Officer at Folk vml. And I do want to call out Ann Mulcahy, new CMO at the National Lottery. I think she's making all the right decisions, doing all the right things, putting and investing in the brand and the production work that makes a difference. It's the critical dimension to all of this. So a great call out to her. Thank you, guys. Appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on the show.

B (37:11)

Thank you.

C (37:12)

Thanks, Fergus.

A (37:13)

And we'll see everyone on the next episode.